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Beyond the Bounds of Cognition Beyond the Bounds of Cognition Tarja Susi ([email protected]) Department of Computer Science, University of Skövde, Box 408 541 28 Skövde, Sweden Jessica Lindblom ([email protected]) Department of Computer Science, University of Skövde, Box 408 541 28 Skövde, Sweden Tom Ziemke ([email protected]) Department of Computer Science, University of Skövde, Box 408 541 28 Skövde, Sweden Abstract stages of historical development humans went beyond the limits of the psychological functions given to them One of the questions that frequently come up in by nature and proceeded to a new culturally-elaborated discussions of situated, embodied and distributed organization of their behavior” (ibid. p. 39). cognition is where to draw the boundary between The question of the bounds of cognition received cognisers and their environment. Adams and Aizawa (2001) have recently formulated a critique of what they somewhat less attention during the first decades of consider a “radical view of tool use”, i.e., the view of cognitive science, which predominantly equated tools as part of the cognitive system. We analyse their cognition with internal computational processes critique and show that much of what they consider implemented by the brain and paid relatively little ‘radical’ turns out to be compatible with what they attention to the interaction of agents and environment. consider ‘common sense’. Hence, we argue that much of The question is currently going through a certain the debate boils down to a disagreement over different revival triggered by increasing interest in theories of uses of the term ‘cognitive’, whereas there is growing situated cognition (e.g., Clancey, 1997; Suchman, agreement about the central role that agent-environment 1987), embodied cognition (e.g., Clark, 1997; Varela, interaction in general, and tool use in particular, play in cognitive processes. We therefore suggest to drop the Thompson & Rosch, 1991) or distributed cognition ‘bounds of cognition’ debate, and conclude by raising (e.g., Hutchins, 1995), all of which emphasise the close what we consider more important questions in the study coupling between agent and environment and its central of cognitive tool use. role in cognitive processes. This shift in what is considered the appropriate unit Introduction of analysis in the study of cognition has noticeably also The question exactly where to draw the boundary led to a corresponding shift in the use of the term between a cognitive system and its environment is as ‘cognitive’. While the term traditionally has been used old as the study of mind itself. Polanyi (1964) and mostly for internal processing, in the 1990s it started to Bateson (1972) illustrated the question with the now appear in expressions like “cognitive tools” or classical example of a blind man using a stick, and “cognitive artifacts” (Norman, 1991, 1993). asked what the bounds of the blind man’s system are. Furthermore, several authors have started to More specifically, does it or does it not include the characterise the whole of humans and the technical stick? Another classical example, that of the knot in the tools they use, e.g., a pilot interacting with the handkerchief, comes from Vygotsky (1978), who instruments in her cockpit, or even a group of humans argued that the knot serves as a reminder that changes interacting with each other and the instruments on the one the psychological structure of the memory process, and bridge of a ship, as ‘cognitive system’ (Hutchins, it extends the operation of memory “beyond the 1995) or as a “joint cognitive system” (Hollnagel, in biological dimensions of the human nervous system” press). (ibid., p. 39). Vygotsky emphasised in particular the Others consider this a “radical view of tool use” role of cultural artefacts in both evolutionary and (Adams & Aizawa, 2001), which blurs the distinction individual development, elaborating that in “[t]he use of between cognitive agents and the non-cognitive tools notched sticks and knots, the beginnings of writing and they use (cf., for instance, Nardi, 1996; Neuman & simple memory aids all demonstrate that even at early Bekerman, 2000). Perhaps most notable among these critics are Adams and Aizawa (2001) who formulated a 1134 detailed critique of several theories they consider guilty manipulation so as to reduce the complex problem to a of going too far in blurring that distinction (Clark & sequence of simpler, pattern-completing steps that we Chalmers, 1998; Dennett, 1996; Donald, 1991; already command. On this model, then, it is the combination of our biological computational profile with Hutchins, 1995). They defend a ‘common sense’ view, the fundamentally different properties of a structured, which they refer to as ‘intracranialism’, considering symbolic, external resource that is a key source of our cognition as “restricted to the confines of our brains” peculiar brand of cognitive success. The external (Adams & Aizawa, 2001, p. 44). environment, actively structured by us, becomes a source We will here argue that Adams and Aizawa, as well of cognition –enhancing ‘wideware’– external items as other critics arguing along similar lines, might be (devices, media, notations) that scaffold and complement tilting at windmills, since most of the views that they (but usually do not replicate) biological modes of describe as ‘radical’ are in fact highly compatible with computation and processing, creating extended cognitive what they consider as ‘common sense’. systems whose computational profiles are quite different from those of the isolated brain” (Clark, 1999, p. 349, The Bounds of Cognition original emphasis). The general point of both these examples, that It is commonly agreed that humans use calculators, road cognitive processes can be complemented, augmented signs, notes, calendars, computers, pen and paper, and and transformed by environmental scaffolds, in even other people as external resources and as a way particular the use of tools, is relatively uncontroversial. around the limitations of their own cognitive capacities. Adams and Aizawa’s critique, however, is directed at In other words, as Clark (1997, p. 68) formulated it, we the idea of the environment as a “source of cognition” “call on external resources to perform specific and the characterisation of agent and environment as an 1 computational tasks” and thus depend on cultural “extended cognitive system”. According to them, artefacts to “augment and enhance biological cognition” “common sense has it that our cognitive faculties, (Clark, 1999, p. 350). restricted to the confines of our brains, can be aided in Consider, for example, the use of Scrabble tiles any manner of ways, by cleverly designed non- (Clark, 1997; Clark & Chalmers, 1998; Kirsh, 1997; cognitive tools” (Adams & Aizawa, 2001, p. 44, Kirsh & Maglio, 1994). As described by Clark (1997), emphases added). That means, they agree that the the tiles are physically ordered and re-ordered during coupling of internal cognitive processes with the play, thereby prompting our own on-line neural environment can augment those processes, but they resources. We manipulate the tiles externally and maintain that coupling “of some process with a broader thereby create a variety of fragmentary inputs (new environment … [does not] extend that process into the letter strings) capable of prompting the recall of whole broader environment” (ibid, p. 56). However, despite a words from the pattern-completing resource. It seems certain disagreement over the use of the term that our own biological resources do not easily provide ‘cognitive’, Adams and Aizawa’s position is highly for this kind of manipulations, which might therefore be compatible with, for example, that of Norman (1991, considered as a set of operational capacities that emerge 1993). Norman used the term ‘cognitive tools’ for tools from the interaction between brain and world. That that enhance human cognitive abilities, and never means, through the flexible use of environmental intended it to refer to tools literally having any of the resources we enhance or augment our own cognitive cognitive processes or abilities that humans are abilities – we use such resources as scaffolds. The endowed with. Considering processes as extending into Scrabble tiles, for instance, scaffold our thinking, and, the broader environment is not necessarily the same as thus in a very real sense it can be said that “the re- saying that the environment, or some part of it, actually arrangement of tiles on the tray is not part of action; it comes to have human-like cognitive processes or is part of thought” (Clark & Chalmers, 1998). capacities itself. Consider a second example, provided by Clark However, Clark and Chalmers (1998) who referred to (1999): their view of the extended mind as an “active “Most of us, armed with pen and paper, can … solve externalism” 2, argued that this is not just a matter of multiplication problems that would baffle our unaided terminology, but much more a matter of methodology: brains. In so doing we create external symbols “… in seeing cognition as extended one is not merely (numerical inscriptions) and use external storage and making a terminological decision; it makes a significant difference to the methodology of scientific investigation. In effect, explanatory methods that might once have been 1 Adams and Aizawa, as well as several of the authors they thought appropriate only for the analysis of ‘inner’ criticise, refer to cognitive and brain processes as processes are now being adapted
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